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Open Source Licensing Issues
msuzio writes "Web Techniques has a good editorial column this month on Open Source licensing issues. They focus on the difficulties in resolving both a single license (GPL, BSD, Apache), but also the deeper tangle of how to handle multiple licenses mixed into one project (a piece from GNU, a piece from Apache, etc). I think this issue will continue to dog efforts to bring together multiple open-source components, both in open-source and commercial projects using open-source."
You (along with many others before you) have struck the nail on the head. The problem is the number of people who feel the need for convergence. IMHO, Windows is convergence -- move to it if thats what you want.
OTOH, if you are a bit of a zealot and want all software to be FSF "free", by all means, promote the GPL.
Personally, I choose licenses based on what my goals are for a given project. If I'm writing something that I'd like to give to the community and involve community help in, I make it GPL. If I wanted to release a large commercial project (like, for example, a good TCP/IP stack), I'd probably make it a BSD-style license to encourage all vendors to use it.
The FSF version of that last sentence would probably be "license it under the GPL to force other vendors to use the GPL" but that's not my attitude -- better to convince with evidence than to coerce.
"A man convinced against his will
is of the same opinion still."
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
My understanding of the GPL (feel free to correct me) is that you have the right to; use and modify the code as you fit, not strings attatched. However, if you redistribute that code (for a fee or gratis), then that code must also be under the GPL, (you must provide source etc).
As I said I don't think there is a problem, "big financial" companies focus on their core business and will not become vendors of ANYTHING other than financial products.
If the apps you are working on are really good they may be sold on a one off basis to a software vendor to then resell. You can bet that a prospective buyer (unless they are complete idoits) will audit the source and find the GPL'd code. They will then come back and say "that's full of GPL code it's only worth 1/10th of the price, your trying to rip us off!". You will then have to explain to your boss why you've tarnished your companies name and wasted a lot of other peoples time.
On the other hand if you are distributing your code and in violation of the GPL is not the original authors you should be worried about it's your own company. Big companies are shit scared of being sued. If the legal dept. gets wind of what your doing I'd expect to see some major shit going down in your department, remember the legal dept. has infinately more clout than "IT" (who everyone hates anyway).
When it absolutely positively has to be there.
Perhaps some day, people will understand that enforcing freedom of assembly does not make people free to assemble. Freedom is not something which can be enforced, for if it is enforced, it is not freedom.
Perhaps some day, people will realize that trying to protect human rights does not make people free. Freedom is not something which can be forced, for if it is forced, it is not freedom.
Perhaps some day, people will realize that posting inanities in cool-sounding but meaningless slogans do not make those slogans true. Truth is not something which is meaningless, for if it is meaningless, it is not true.
Go look at the freshmeat submissions on any day, and you'll realize where developer sentiment lies.
:-) Am I being exploited? No! I have made a conscious decision to share my code with zero strings attached. If someone else can make money off of my code, my hat goes off to them, because I sure can't. There is no way in the world they can lock up my code. It's physically impossible. It's on my harddrive, on my website, and on a few others as well. No matter what they do with their copy of the code, my copy is still here untouched. You can't steal what is free.
There would be no way to find out, but it would be interesting to know how many developers chose the GPL because a) they had to in order to use some other code, or b) because they thought they had to. In the case of the latter, I've seen enough posters here on Slashdot who think the GPL is the only approved Free Software license. And I have even received an email from someone asking me to GPL my otherwise BSD licensed code because "I will only use Free Software."
Otherwise, they'd be dupes, unpaid employees working for someone else
Oooh! A direct insult
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Is tacking a Copyleft (GPL) in the header of your code a real way to protect it? Shouldn't it actually be copyrighted and released under the GPL, et al?
Correct. Code licensde under the GNU General Public License contains a comment at the top containing a copyright notice, a permission statement that places the program under GPL, a warranty disclaimer, and where to find a copy of the License. A shorter notice is commonly used in interactive programs' about boxes and in the "verbose" mode of command-line programs. For more information, read the end of the GNU GPL to see how to apply the License to your own code.
Tetris on drugs, NES music, and GNOME vs. KDE Bingo.
Will I retire or break 10K?
When all else fails, use your common sense.
1) Use the license YOU want to use on your own projects. If you don't like copyleft licenses then don't use them. If you don't like unrestricted licenses then don't use them. Easy, isn't it? But by all means, don't go creating your own new license. There are enough good ones out there that it isn't necessary. There are still some licensing niches to fill in the OSS hierarchy, but I doubt your project fits that bill. The BSD, MIT, GPL, LGPL, MPL, QPL and Artistic licenses are sufficient to meet your needs.
2) Don't get religious over licensing. The well known licenses all have their place. As soon as you say "I will never use the BSD/GPL/QPL/whatever license" you will immediately run across a situation where you will need it. I am personally not fond of copyleft, but if I were to release a commercial open source product that faced competition, you can bet you bippy that I would seriously consider using the GPL. Likewise, don't let license bigotry get in the way of your helping out on other people's projects.
3) Assign your copyrights over to the author. Don't insist on holding on to the copyright for your bug fixes and minor contributions. That's so egotistical as to be stupid. You will get mentioned in the credits, so don't worry about it. You will make the author's life so much easier. If your are the original author or project maintainer, then insist that all copyrights be assigned to the you or the project. If you want your project to be "community based", then seriously consider assigning your copyright to the FSF, creating your own non-profit org, or placing it in the public domain. Do you really want the submitter of a five line bug fix to be in control of all licensing decisions from here on out?
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The number of new open source licenses has exploded in recent years. Oddly, the amount of open source software has also exploded in recent years, which is not what you'd expect if multiple licenses were somehow a deterrent to development. Then the argument is always pushed into the future -- eventually, a diversity of licenses will choke open source. Yeah, right.
Let's put this in proper perspective: Compared to commercial software, the handful of open source licenses out there is barely worth noticing. Every software company, and frequently every individual commercial product, has its own license. There are literally tens of thousands of commercial software licenses out there right now, and yet commercial software is a multi-billion dollar industry, growing by leaps and bounds.
Free software licenses are an annoyance at worst. In cases where they prevent an existing package from being used, they end up spurring the development of a competing package. That may be a pain in the ass for developers, but it's a good thing for users.
--
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
I doubt that Roe v. Wade would be overturned; it would be such a PR nightmare that I would suspect it would bring about the demise of the GOP.
-bugg
Now I need to add file upload capability; there is a file upload component out there, but the license is weird and definitely not compatible with what I'm doing. So I'm going to have to reinvent that wheel, and I'm going to have to do it 'clean room' even though I know that there are a lot of tricky little tweaks which someone else has already sorted out...
And what a strange license that one is! Certainly you should not use it. Don't even contemplate it.
As for the 'clean room', I don't think that is necessary. You cannot copyright an algorithm. If you peer at their source code to see how they did something, it's legally okay (I am not a lawyer!). Just make doubly sure you don't implement it in the same way.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that life would be a lot simpler, and we would get a lot more innovation done, if the Intellectual Property laws (including copyright) were just scrapped.
It wouldn't make much of a difference. Most proprietary licenses, including the MSEULA, are not based on copyright or any other intellectual property. They are based on contract law instead. That's why they're called "agreements".
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The idea that PROPRIETARY software should only be reused in PROPRIETARY software is attractive. But the viral nature of COPYRIGHT LAW means that a line of code that is copied from one project to another contaminates other code that might be used in a third project. That's the intent of COPYRIGHT LAW - to eventually encumber the entire PROPRIETARY software pool. To me, it's distasteful that a line or two of code ties the hands of developers who have written a huge project of their own and who may never have seen a line from the original COPYRIGHTED project.
WHY ARE YOU COPYING CODE IF YOU DON'T WANT TO BE ENCUMBERED BY SOMEONE ELSE'S LICENSE? If you don't like my license, DON'T USE MY CODE! Why is this so hard to understand?
Well, people have been able to make money with my code under the GPL rules. But I never would have contributed that code without the GPL. And I care little about the copy on my hard drive. The point is the copies in other people's hands, and that's where the GPL protections are important. We would never have gotten free software into so many people's hands with different rules.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Perhaps some day, people will understand that the GPL does not make code free. Freedom is not something which can be forced, for if it is forced, it is not freedom.
-Nev
GPL - license for authors who wish to garantee that all dirivative works based on their code also be relesed under the same free software license.
The GPL doesn't guarantee this. For instance, look at clause 9. Sure, we all think the FSF are a bunch of great guys who would never dick around with anyone. Except if I was, say, Apple, releasing my source code I can't think of a single reason why I would give the FSF that kind of power.
the most important thing here, is when you combine stuff from all the different licenses, to make sure there are no extra loopholes for greedy corporate lawyers. maybe we need one unified standard to do this. as always, teamwork is the key. if licenses need to be combined, the backers of those licenses need to be determined which can and will be used.
It is too up to the original author. I can license my code under the GPL, then turn around and offer the exact same code under different terms. I can't prevent the other people from taking the GPLed code instead, but they'll have to live with the limits placed on the code by the GPL. Being the copyright holder, I can do pretty much whatever I want with it within the limits of copyright law.
The only real limit the GPL places on my power is that I cannot tell people "you can't use the GPLed version anymore, give it back".
The KDE/Qt thing was, if you look beyond all the hype, basically RMS telling the KDE guys that there could be some problems with this code at some point in the future. At least, that's the impression I got by reading things.
-RickHunter
If you give people the choice of BSD or GPL, then your code is usuable with projects under all known forms of license.
And if anybody has a problem with you making your code available to anyone who wants it -- tell them to go fuck themselves. We're programmers, not missionaires for their religion, we want people to use our code and if they have a problem with that, well it's their problem not ours.
At least, that's what I think. I could be wrong.
Do the words of the licenses actually stand up on a purely legal aspect? Is tacking a Copyleft (GPL) in the header of your code a real way to protect it? Shouldn't it actually be copyrighted and released under the GPL, et al?
This area brings a lot of ambiguity. What is the legitimacy of the Open Source licenses on a global level?
It seems that while the licenses are worded well and seem legally sound they depend a lot on good faith on the part of the user/company using the code.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
As usual the only ones to profit are the greedy lawyers. Geeks like us are made to suffer all the jumping through hoops that go with restrictive licesnes.
More legal information can be found by searching for 'licensing' and 'software' on google.
> Just distribute your program as a binary only, and make the lawyers decompose it and prove that you compiled it from your source.
On the plaintiff's side, just write your code so that the compiled result creates a distinctive pattern easily found by grepping the output of strings.
That way, the baddies will at least have to spend some time looking your code over before they steal it.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Can't you say that the program can only be distributed with GPLv2, and no other version? I see stuff in clause 9 which addresses version + any later, and where no version is given, but I see nothing which says that a newer version much be accepted.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
You may see it as 'allowance' and not 'pushing', but the reality of the attitude from the inside is definately to push.
... "
How many official FSF people wouldn't push a company to use GPL'd solutions? Not hand it to them and smile, saying "here, isn't it wonderful?" but "you _should_ use this
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
There must be a Laffer Curve for software.
Now, if everything were copyleft (a Free Software advocate's dream) we'd be all the way over to the right of the curve. Likewise, if nobody had ever shared source, achievements in computer science would be very limited. We'd be all the way over to the left of the curve.
As usual, the truth is in the middle. I dislike Copyleft because it has a tendency to push us farther and farther to the right on this graph. Eventually, it may reduce the output of useful code. Despite what FSF advocates say, reducing useful output does *not* enhance freedom.
What we really need are some useful measurements of output and utility in the software industry. Maybe someday we will even be able to establish an optimum ammount of time that should be spent contributing to Open Source. However, it is likely to remain a political issue for the foreseable future--just like taxation.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
As a first approximation, you should think of the software produced under the various licenses as falling into separate equivalence classes. If you discover a "leak" between two equivalence classes that lets you use the code or components from different classes together, well and good -- but don't assume that things will work that way until it has been demonstrated.
To paraphrase another poster, decide in advance which equivalence class you want your code to be in. That tells you which license to use.
Notice that this is not notably different from proprietary software. All of Sun's secret code falls into an equivalence class separate from all of Microsoft's, and there's no a priori reason to expect that you can freely combine the two.
What I don't get is why so many people hear "open source" and think they have an intrinsic right to use the code however they please. If you use code under a license, you are bound by that license just as surely as you are bound by the controls on code coming out of Sun and Microsoft.
Granted, this forces a duplication of effort between equivalence classes. If you are working in Class A and need a widget that is only available in Class B, you have to re-implement it in your own class.
Still, the mere existence of the "open" classes has been a huge boon to code reuse, and as Open Source catches on, the number of members of each class continues to grow phenomenally. Regardless of which "open" class you release your code into, you are participating in a sharability far beyond anything you can participate in with proprietary code.
So pick a class that's large and growing, and that has a license that suits your ideals, and go with it. But don't waste your time whingeing about not being able to steal stuff out of the other classes. A license is a license, and you should take it seriously. No one promised you unrestricted access to anything you might happen to want. You might as well complain about not being able to use Microsoft's source code in your own project.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I used to use the GPL for my software because I liked the idea of having control over my code. But two points came up during the KDE/QPL dispute that made me change my mind.
1) The idea that free software should only be reused in free software is attractive. But the viral nature of the GPL means that a line of code that is copied from one project to another contaminates other code that might be used in a third project. That's the intent of the GPL - to eventually encumber the entire free software pool. To me, it's distasteful that a line or two of code ties the hands of developers who have written a huge project of their own and who may never have seen a line from the original GPL project.
2) And it's not even up to the original author. IIRC, there was no case where an author of GPL code objected to its use in KDE. (RMS's "forgiveness" notwithstanding.) As soon as the words "GPL violation" are used, the Slashdot/Technocrat/FSF lynch mob heads out, apparently in the belief that since they're Members Of The Community, they somehow get to act as the aggrieved party. I'd prefer to keep control of my code, but I'd rather see it wind up in Windows than have it used to ruin a well-intentioned project.
Case in point: If Linux were actually free software, not locked in GPL, MSFT could cull whatthey desired fromit to include in Windows without having to open Windows up.
There is the critical distinction: Free, as long as you do .... means it IS NOT FREE. It has a price, therefore it is not free.
Now, I am not talking free as in beer, but free as in first amendment (which we no longer even have in the states as long as I cannot call the state capitol and tell them I have planted 2000lbs f eplosives there and have it be legal).
No one wants freedom, we don't trust it. We all want to call our desires freedom because it sounds nice, and it might be a prettier prison, but they are very rarely, if ever, actually desires for freedom.
The GPL is a actually a much more restrive, if prettier, prison than regular proprietary source code. The reason being that with proprietary code the potential exists for it to become actually, truly free. With the GPL it is locked into the GPL in perpetuity. It is like releasing someone in the US from jail, telling them they are free, and letting em walk away. They look, feel, and think they are free, but if they try to exercise that freedom, by say smoking some bud, beating up and old lady, or calling the white house and claiming to be a sniper looking at the door at that very moment, then they find out how little freedom they have. You cannot do what you want, you are not free. You merely have a more comfy, better disguised enclosure.
Frums
> If I wanted to release a large commercial project (like, for example, a good TCP/IP stack), I'd probably make it a BSD-style license to encourage all vendors to use it. The FSF version of that last sentence would probably be "license it under the GPL to force other vendors to use the GPL" but that's not my attitude -- better to convince with evidence than to coerce.
And therein lies the misconception. The FSF doesn't aspire to make everyone use FSF solutions; they aspire to let everyone use FSF solutions.
If you want to coerce everyone into using your solution, you do that with a monopoly rather than a license.
The thing about TCP/IP isn't the choice of whose source code you use, but rather adherence to a standard. The GPL has nothing to do with standards, and since the FSF is adamantly against software patents, widespread use of the GPL implementation of something like a communications protocol will not prevent others from producing their own implementations of the same thing according to the same standard.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If I take a piece of GPL'd code that has the usual header and the lineand then I incorporate portions of that code into my project (possibly with substantial modifications), what is the etiquette for the new copyright specification?
Do I leave his name on it? Do I replace his with mine? Do I append my name to his, to create a list of copyright holders?
The latter would seem to be most proper, and would create an interesting documented pedigree for the work, but it would surely become unwieldy after the code had been handed around through 50 authors.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
In my estimation there are basically 4 license schemes that would fill just about every niche.
1. BSD - license of choice for authors who beleive that anyone should be able to do whatever they want with free software they create.
2. GPL - license for authors who wish to garantee that all dirivative works based on their code also be relesed under the same free software license.
3. LGPL - license for people who wish to allow diferently licensed software to be linked against their code, otherwise similar to GPL
4. GPL/dual-license (e.g. qt, new mozilla license) - software licensed under GPL, but with declared provision for use not normally allowed by the GPL. This scheme works well for authors who wish to support free software, but also want to add flexibitity in licensing, and even a possible profit stream.
I can't posibly think of reason anyone whould want to use a license such as the artistic license, or a custom license, other than to be perverse, and confusing.
You don't understand that in order to have freedom and not anarchy, everyone needs to give away certain rights: for example, the right to hurt other people. The GPL is a means to do just that.
BTW, this is a pretty basic topic in political philosophy, eg. Jean-Jacques Rousseau expressed his views on it in his work "The Social Contract".
The limitation isn't necessarily by the developer against the developer. It maybe by the developer in as a favor to his poor dependent customer who needs to first break even and will not except any tool that doesn't allow him that.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
This is much harder than you think, and probably impossible in the long run. Why? Because some of the licenses that your code might wind up in (like the BSD license) are specifically designed to allow incorporation of their source into non-free projects. Once your code was put into a BSD licensed project, it could then be transfered into a proprietary one. To protect your intent, they'd have to relicense the part of their project that incorporated your code under a different style of license, which specifically undermines your goal of letting your code play friendly with everyone else. It's just not possible to have code that's useable by any free software project but not by a proprietary one.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Okay, let's say I have an apple orchard and I want my apples to be free. Bad analogy, I know, but bear with me...
One way to make them free is to post I sign telling the whole world, or just the passerbys, that the apples are free and to take as much as they want.
Another way is to add a license to that sign telling everyone that anything they make with the apples must also be free. Then I would go out and sue everyone who sold apple pies made with my apples. How dare they!
As bad as that analogy is, the point is that attaching strings to your code does not make it any more free than without them.
I'm not ragging on the GPL. I've seen enough bad licenses to know that it is a very good license. But what ticks me off are folks that think anything else is just for "dupes". I know scores of folks who use BSD or MIT like licenses. Jordan Hubbard, Theo De Raadt, Brian Behlendorf, David Dawes, et al. They certainly are not dupes.
Would Apache and Xfree86 have done any better if they were under the GPL? I don't think so.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
This might be a bit off-topic, but I think it's important that we examine our reasons (and the feelings that underpin them) for wanting software to be free.
The following was written by a musician (thus the reference to harmony) but it shows that the idea of shared software was around long before GNU:
I think that many programmers instinctively feel the way that Cage did, and are distressed that others choose to hoard software, whatever the reason. Cage was an unusual artist ("Thank God!" some folks would say), but I think he was of like mind to many creative programmers. He did not feel diminished when other people borrowed from his work. Other artists had problems with this, but it was at the heart of the "how" and "why" of his creations (and the reason why most of them were, in one form or another, collaborations).
Likewise, programmers who feel that sharing leads to increase and not to diminishment meet the same sort of resistance from those who feel that other considerations predominate. And I suspect that this difference is deeper than mere opinion. Small children understand quite well that sharing must work both ways: I'll share with you, but only if you share with me. The GPL casts this simple, bone-deep feeling in the form of a software license. I'll let you decide whether the feeling remains a fundamental one in this context, or a childish one -- and whether the difference in outlook between those who espouse it and those who oppose it is too broad a gap to bridge.
You don't need to find a judge fluent in assembly, you need to find an expert willing to testify that it is likely that the source code was stolen. The judge can rule that source code from both parties be turned over to the court and the court can then make an informed decision about whether source code was stolen or not.
Linux is probably the first real kernel written by volunteers - BSD was written by people working on a government grant, and is derivative of ATT Unix, although later modifications are contributed by volunteers. Why do those volunteers feel good about writing free code? Because abuses are prohibited by the license. Otherwise, they'd be dupes, unpaid employees working for someone else who makes all of the money on a product and puts economic locks on that product using proprietary software, cutting out the free contributor. In that case, the free code would actually be weakening the free software movement by playing into the abuser's hands. That's why more developers choose the GPL. And it's the developers who matter here - no code? Then there's little prospect for users.
The choice is simple here, at least for me. I write BSD-licensed code when someone else is paying me to do so and they insist on the BSD license. I write LGPL or GPL-licensed code the rest of the time, and I feel good about that it's doing for the free software movement.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Are you saying that when the U.S. government made slavery illegal, that the former slaves were not actually free because they were "freed" by force?
Arguments like yours are exactly why I dislike the GPL and RMS's attempts to use his position in the community to unduly influence (some would say force) people to GPL their programs if released under competing "Open Source" as opposed to "Free Software" licenses.
The situation of blacks in the southern U.S. was practically unchanged for decades after they were "freed". They couldn't vote, own property, obtain a decent education, live in safety, obtain bank loans, or do several other things that most "free" white people take for granted. There are many who believe that in several parts of the U.S., black people are still second class citizens that can be killed by the police with impunity and are undeserving of basic human rights. Would this situation have been averted if instead of the South being forced to free the slaves by "those damned Yankees", the south reached a collective epiphany and realized that slavery was evil, willingly freed the slave and welcomed them into society? Maybe, maybe not. I personally think that in the long run it would have been better if the slaves were willingly freed instead of forcibly liberated.
As to what this has to do with Free Software and Open Source, I believe that if the GPL wins out because it was forced on the community instead of because the community and the software industry as a whole wants to use it, less will benefit. Some versions of Windows currently uses a TCP/IP stack obtained from *BSD which is only possible due to the nature of the BSD license. Windows would never have benefitted from BSDs superior TCP/IP stack if it was GPLed because microsoft would have never used GPLed code in their OS and risk having to GPL Windows.
The way I see it is if all Open Source software is GPLed without it being the will of the people we will see more stealing of GPLed code in closed source products, less involvement by people who are technically adept but also apolitical such as nyself and others who support the BSD style licenses, and less adoption of Open Source software by closed source companies.
Basically I'm trying to say; You can't force people to be good, kind-hearted and generous, and any attempts to do so are usually met with hostility and resentment.
Disclaimer: I am a black youth who lives in the southern U.S.
Grabel's Law
Now I need to add file upload capability; there is a file upload component out there, but the license is weird and definitely not compatible with what I'm doing. So I'm going to have to reinvent that wheel, and I'm going to have to do it 'clean room' even though I know that there are a lot of tricky little tweaks which someone else has already sorted out...
There's no doubt that open source licensing is a bit of a mess. I've a great deal of respect for RMS; we wouldn't be anywhere like where we are now without him. But at the same time after a lot of thought I've decided that the BSD-style licence is best for what I'm doing, because I want my work to be useful to the widest possible number of people and that explicitly includes people working in shops where they aren't realistically going to be allowed to publish their mods.
I'm increasingly of the opinion that life would be a lot simpler, and we would get a lot more innovation done, if the Intellectual Property laws (including copyright) were just scrapped. And yes, I do earn my living doing this.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
CAn you imagine a judge demanding that MS turn over Win2k code and make it a matter of public record?
There's the flaw in that argument.
They have detailed information on all the licenses currently used, the conflicts between them and describe suitable business models for each. I mention it because my friend, Jane, works there ;) It is suited perfectly to this issue.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
RMS talks about a number of different licenses here. He breaks up each license on a number of axis -- their compatibility with the GPL, whether or not they are copyleft (viral, in the rough vernacular we're so fond of here), and whether or not they are free.
He adds a small amount of his own editorializing; however, he limits his comments primarily to the free / not free axis of each license, the onerous and difficult clauses in other licenses, and the legal looseness of some licenses. He refrains from making any value judgement on the non-copyleft nature of the BSD-type license, so most of you can probably read the entire page without getting your underwear in a bunch.
It's fun to bash RMS, but he at least understands the issues, unlike the guy that wrote that wrote that article in webtechniques. Why did slashdot post this article in the first place?
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
One problem is that many software packages have a large number of authors, and it can be hard to track them all down and coordinate legal permission for an exception. Just witness the hassles that the Mozilla project is having to go through to relicense the code under the GPL (although things like this can be done, with perseverence). (It would have been much easier if they had taken RMS's advice and made the NPL/MPL GPL-compatible to begin with.)
(This is another advantage to the FSF's policy of copyright assignment: there is only a single copyright holder to deal with in case of problems.)
If a thing is not diminished by being shared, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned & not shared. S. Augustine
It has been said that software released under the GNU GPL is not in fact free-as-in-speech because the GPL curtails the freedom of programmers. This perspective is confused: the GNU GPL does indeed liberate the software precisely because it restricts the freedom of its developers.
The GPL establishes a new legal entity (the software) and defines its rights; that is, it describes what licensees may and may not do to the software, and further describes the obligations that they incur as a result of doing certain things to the software.
Now, the GNU GPL does not curtail the rights of the copyright holder (which include freedom) and in fact relies on the enforceability of said licensor rights; however, the GNU GPL does curtail the rights of users and developers of the software who do not hold a copyright on the entire work.
It has also been said that one's freedom ends where another's begins; according to that perspective, which is widely held even by those who object to the GNU GPL, curtailing of the freedom of developers is perfectly legitimate in the context of the GPL's goals, which include protecting the rights of software. However, while limiting freedom to guarantee freedom is probably a defensible proposition, the above argument in defense of the GPL is only tenable if one assumes that software can have unassailable rights. I propose that things do not have rights -- people have rights.
If you believe in the primacy of people's rights, it is perfectly legitimate to object to the GNU GPL; in fact, some radical libertarians believe that the very notion of copyright (and, by extension, copyleft) is flawed. In any case, this Slashdot discussion is motivated by the fact that there are talented programmers who choose to release their software under licenses that limit the freedom of people in various unpleasant ways.
When source code is released under a suitably permissive license or into the public domain, developers are free to recombine it at will, which is a Good Thing. Of course, some people choose to withhold their (modified) source code, but we should respect their right to do that because they, and not the programs, are free -- and that is a good thing.
> > "Errr. Sorry, we lost the source. "
.. And have a criminal case for falsificating evidence when an unhappy employee proves that you *did* have the source.
o n-papers-that-we-have-destroyed', or the 'I-dont-understand-what-you-mean-by-marketshare'
x t' (remove the space betweem 'tx' and 't' :-))
>
In that case: "Oh, glad you found it back. Having lost it was a big problem for us"
Be serious. See the huge load of evident bullshit that Bill Gates or the RIAA/MPAA heads told to the us courts. In the antitrust case, M$ falsificated shitloads of evidence, from the faked 'Remove-explorer-from-Windows video tape' to the 'sorry-we-count-licenses-of-windows-solds-to-eom-
Wanna laugh ? Re-read 'http://www.2600.com/dvd/docs/2000/0606-valenti.t
Cheers,
--fred
1 reply beneath your current threshold.
So it's to be a one-way street, then? Companies that wish to sell proprietary software should be able to benefit from the efforts of the free software community without giving anything back in return? That's a distinctly one-sided kind of "freedom".
The GPL isn't forcing anyone to do anything. It's simply saying "If you want to use my code, you have use it under the same conditions I am".
GPL'ers want free (as both in beer and speech) software to be the norm. Many commercial entities have no objection to handing out sourcecode but want measurable benefits in doing so and so go the GPL-inspired licences route. Other commercial and non-commercial outfits just want their code out there being used. They don't care if someone profits from it - the worst that can happen is that they won't have the source code to modifications a third party has made, and that's not a big deal if you're already delighted the work you've done has made it elsewhere.
Trying to argue that we can somehow resolve these issues is, in my opinion, a waste of time. For myself, I fall into the latter group - I'd like what I write to be made use of, and if I were to write a TCP/IP stack that turned up in Windows 2010, I'd be proud as punch and pretty delighted about it. I also want access to code I don't have to be bothered about rules applying to if I make modifications. Others, I know, feel very differently, and I think they have a perfect right to feel differently and to want their code handed out under a different set of rules.
If we try to get the world of open source licences to converge, IMO, we end up disenfranchising those who want to write code under whatever conditions they feel most appropriate. And given the willingness of programmers to duplicate work they find interesting, I don't necessarily see it as something that has massive negative consequences. I also suspect that the practicality of seeing the licences converge is close to zero. People will develop under whatever conditions they find most appropriate, and, for myself, if BSD and X were to decide to incorporate the GPL conditions into their licencing models, I'd probably just move out of their licencing arena, and develop under different conditions.
--
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.